NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee President Frank Page has announced the members of an advisory team who will help him craft a strategic plan to bring together various groups within the convention who hold different opinions on the issue of Calvinism.

The 16-member group will conduct its first meeting Aug. 29-30 in Nashville, Tenn.

“My goal is to develop a strategy whereby people of various theological persuasions can purposely work together in missions and evangelism,” Page told Baptist Press. The list was announced Aug. 15.

At some point in the coming weeks and months, he said, “most likely there will be the crafting of a statement regarding the strategy on how we can work together.”

“I want to be very clear: This is not an attempt to redo the theological consensus that we have in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000,” Page said. “It is practical in nature, not doctrinal.”

Page emphasized that the group is “not an official committee” of the convention. He also said additional names could be added to the group.

“It’s a group of helpers helping Frank Page come up with some sort of strategy document,” he said.

David Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., helped Page put together the list.

“We wanted people who truly represented the various constituencies involved in this theological discussion,” said Page, who in May and then in June publicly said he was working on naming such a group.

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